01Climb the value chain
Move from selling raw produce at the gate to grading, processing, storing and branding it.
Food security and farmer wellbeing are the same problem.
We build the technology that moves smallholder farmers up the value chain, and sells their produce closer to the people who eat it.
Co-created with farmers, FPOs, nonprofits, governments and buyers.
Whoever grows the food has to be able to live on it.
A country cannot secure its food supply on the backs of people who can barely afford to keep farming. The person who grows the food has to be able to live on it. Otherwise the next generation leaves, and the supply goes with them.
The person who takes the most risk earns the least.
More than half of India works on farms. The economics they work under would not be accepted in any other industry.
₹1,500 a month
The lowest income
A smallholder working two and a half acres earns roughly ₹1,500 a month from it. That is not a living, and everyone in the household knows it, which is why the young leave first.
Most exposed
The highest risk
Of everyone in the value chain, from input sellers and traders to processors and retailers, the farmer carries the most exposure to weather, pests, price and debt, and has the least cushion against any of it.
12–15% of the rupee
The longest distance to market
Between a farmer and the person eating the food there are eight to twenty-six hops. The farmer keeps twelve to fifteen per cent of what the consumer pays.
Today: eight to twenty-six hops between the plate and the field.
- Consumer
- Retailer
- Distributor
- Processor
- Wholesaler
- Mandi trader
- Commission agent
- Village aggregator
- FPO
- Farmer
Every hop removed is income that stays on the farm.
The climate story is a food story, and the smallholder is at its centre.
Food security is usually told as a story about harvests. It is really a story about whether the people who grow the food can keep doing it.
- 01
The food comes from small farms.
Much of what India eats is grown on holdings of a few acres, by households with the least cushion against a bad season. Secure them, and you secure the plate.
- 02
The climate reaches them first.
Erratic rain, heat and new pests land hardest on rainfed plots with no storage and no second income. One bad season can undo three good ones.
- 03
When farming stops paying, the supply leaves.
The young go first, because everyone in the household can do the arithmetic. A food system cannot outlast the people who stop growing for it.
- 04
The soil is the long-term food reserve.
Practices that keep soil and water intact protect the next decade's harvest, and when they are tracked well enough, they can be paid for.
A single farmer has no leverage. A network does.
A smallholder alone cannot negotiate a price, meet a buyer's volume, afford a warehouse, or get a certification audited. The same farmer inside a functioning producer organisation can do all four. So we build the ecosystem around the farmer, and keep it open.
The farmer
Four moves, for the collective as much as the individual.
An ecosystem, so that farmers and FPOs have genuine choices rather than one trader at the gate.
01
02Sell closer to the plate
Fewer hops between the field and the consumer, through both institutional and direct channels.
03Farm with the climate in mind
Practices that keep soil and water intact, tracked well enough to be paid for.
04Build the institution
An FPO that can run its own books, hold its own stock and keep its own promises to buyers.
Four things have to move at once.
Raise income without lowering cost and the gain disappears into the next season's inputs. Lower cost without reducing risk and one bad season undoes three good ones. Manage both while mining the soil and the problem simply moves to the next generation.
Raise income
Grade, store, process and sell closer to the plate, so more of the rupee stays on the farm.
Lower cost
Inputs bought together and cost of cultivation tracked, so a gain is not eaten by next season's bills.
Reduce risk
Advisory, weather and more than one buyer, so one bad season does not undo three good ones.
Restore the soil
Practices that keep soil and water intact, so the problem does not simply move to the next generation.
Six systems, one value chain.
Each works on its own. They share one record of the farmer, the plot and the produce, which is what turns six tools into a value chain.
A producer organisation that can actually keep a promise to a buyer.
Most FPOs fail on operations, not intent. A buyer asks for four tonnes of a single grade by Thursday, and nobody can say with confidence who has it, where it is stored, what it cost to procure or whether the last consignment was paid for. The ERP answers those questions: members, procurement, harvest, grading, inventory, warehouse and books in one place, run by staff who are not accountants.
- Member and shareholder management
- Procurement and harvest capture
- Grading and processing
- Inventory and warehouse
- Buyer and supplier management
- Payments to members
- Accounts and compliance
- QR-based traceability
More than one buyer is the whole point.
A farmer with one buyer has a price taker's life. Market linkage gives the FPO several live routes to sell: institutional buyers, processors and exporters on the B2B side, and direct-to-consumer channels for the produce that earns more when it carries a story. Listings, negotiation, contracts, logistics and payment in one flow, across several markets at once.
- B2B buyer marketplace
- B2C storefronts and subscriptions
- Multi-market listings
- Price discovery
- Orders, contracts and quality terms
- Logistics and dispatch
- Settlement and reconciliation
The whole season in one pocket.
Inputs at the start, advice through the season, a record of what was done on which plot, and a way to sell at the end: the same app, in the farmer's language, working on an inexpensive phone with a weak signal. Farmers also use it to learn, to ask questions, and to see what worked for someone farming the same crop two villages away.
- Input ordering and credit
- Crop advisory and weather
- Plot and cultivation records
- Cost of cultivation tracking
- Sell through the FPO or direct
- Learning and peer questions
- Works offline
A whole state converting is a data problem before it is an agronomy problem.
Moving lakhs of farmers to organic or natural practice means proving it, plot by plot, over several years, which is exactly where these missions stall. We run the registry of farmers and plots, the practice tracking that field staff actually fill in, the group certification paperwork, and the traceability that lets the produce command the premium the conversion was supposed to earn.
- Farmer and plot registry
- Practice and input tracking
- Conversion period management
- Group certification workflows
- Field staff task management
- Traceability to the buyer
- Mission dashboards
Built around the farmer household, not the donor report.
Nonprofits running farmer programmes end up bending a sales CRM into a shape it was never built for. This one starts from the household: who they are, what they grow, which interventions they have had, what changed. Field staff tooling works on a phone in a field, and reporting produces baseline, midline and endline without three weeks of spreadsheet surgery.
- Farmer household records
- Intervention tracking
- Field force task management
- Progress against plan
- Baseline, midline, endline
- Funder and board reporting
The app a farmer already has open.
Asking a farmer to install one more app is a real cost. Most of what they need, from today's price and whether to spray to when procurement opens and where their payment is, fits inside a WhatsApp conversation in their own language, with voice for anyone who would rather speak than type. It is also the cheapest way to reach the farmers who are not yet in any programme.
- WhatsApp and SMS bots
- Local languages
- Voice input and replies
- Prices and advisory on demand
- Registration and onboarding
- Escalation to a human
Farm to kitchen, on one record.
QR-based traceability follows a lot from the farmer who grew it to the kitchen that cooked it, and shows where each rupee went.
Software that survives a village at harvest time.
Most agri software is designed in a city and dies in a field. These constraints are not features we added later; they decided how everything was built.
Simple enough for one hand
Used standing in a field, often by someone who has never filled in a form on a phone before. Fewer screens, bigger targets, no jargon.
Multilingual by default
Every interface in the language the farmer actually speaks, with voice where reading is the barrier.
Works on a weak signal
Offline capture that syncs when the network returns, because procurement day does not wait for coverage.
Open and interoperable
Standards and APIs so third parties can build on it: the only route to a platform the sector eventually owns.
Our impact on the ground.
23+Agriculture programmes and partners
11 yrsOn the ground in Indian agriculture
5M+Farmers reached through what we build
11States where our agriculture work reaches
The Global Goals it moves.
1
No poverty
No poverty2
Zero hunger
Zero hunger5
Gender equality
Gender equality8
Decent work and economic growth
Decent work and economic growth12
Responsible consumption and production
Responsible consumption and production13
Climate action
Climate action15
Life on land
Life on land17
Partnerships for the goals
Partnerships for the goals
A platform the farmers end up owning.
The end state we are working toward is not a large agri-tech company with many farmer users. It is a farmer-owned collective that runs the platform itself, with inputs, outputs and services, and with us as one of the contributors rather than the landlord.
Why it can be handed over
- The licences are open.
- The APIs are public.
- State agriculture missions are built as platforms rather than projects.
A project ends when its funding does. A platform keeps compounding.
Food security is not achieved by a good harvest. It is achieved when farming is a life worth staying in.
We deliver across the ecosystem, for the people at its heart.
Farmers & collectives
The smallholder and the FPOs they organise into.
Governments & public programmes
State and national programmes shaping the sector.
Civil society & philanthropies
Foundations and CSR moving resources to the ground.
Markets & agri-business
The enterprises that buy, move and add value.
Agri-startups & innovators
Builders whose tools need to survive real conditions, not just the demo.
How can we help?
“We do not start with a proposal. We start by understanding your problem well enough to deserve one. Bring it to us as it is, messy is fine, and we will figure out the way forward together.”
SG
Talk to usSatyam GambhirCo-founder, commons.inc
Programme strategy & scale-up
We shape agricultural programmes from first concept, then build the model that lets them grow without falling apart.
Agriculture service design
How food actually reaches people: the pathways, touchpoints and moments in between, so every stakeholder can use the tools built for them.
Digital agriculture platforms
Built to be adapted, extended and used by the organisations doing the work.
Field deployment & operations
Deployment, training and handover. Technology that is not adopted is not infrastructure.
Agriculture products.
A complete ERP for Farmer Producer Organisations: members and shares, input business, procurement, warehouse, sales, accounting, GST, compliance and payroll, linked to a farmer.
A B2B and B2C marketplace that connects farmers, FPOs and artisans to buyers: storefront, bulk trade, FPO systems, traceability and fast farmer payouts.
Survey
Sell
BuyersRun a natural farming programme end to end: farmer and plot records, advisories, field visits, practice adoption and the income it changed.
Rural development on one record: the village institutions that carry the last mile of every programme, and the systems that hold them up.
The rest of the system.
Surveys for the social sector: build in minutes, collect on web, WhatsApp and an Android app that works offline, check quality as answers arrive.
Project management for nonprofits: organise teams, volunteers and partners into projects and tasks, with lists, boards, timelines, portfolios, goals and a field app that works offline.
Conversational analytics: ask any question about your programmes in plain English and get live reports on learning, livelihoods and more.
Run the whole fellowship journey: before, during and after.
Your own crowdfunding and employee giving platform, under your brand, with every donor relationship yours to keep.
Find, train, deploy and thank volunteers, and show the impact of their work.
Tell us where your farmers are losing money.
An FPO, a state mission, a nonprofit programme or a buyer looking for a reliable supply: we will tell you honestly where we would start and what it would take.
